This is my personal blog. I was Branch Secretary of Lambeth UNISON from 1992 to 2017 and a member of the National Executive Council (NEC) of UNISON, the public service union (www.unison.org.uk) from 2003 to 2017.
I am Chair of Brighton Pavilion Constituency Labour Party and of the Sussex Labour Representation Committee (LRC).
Neither the Labour Party nor UNISON is responsible for the contents of this personal blog. (Nor is my employer!)

This is something that those of us who work in public services know all too well. Private contractors are not our “partners” and they don’t exist, as public sector bodies do, in order to provide services – they exist to maximise shareholder value, which means you have to watch them like hawks.

It is all very well the NAO and the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee berating the public sector managers who are “allowing themselves” to be ripped off. The problem is not about competency. It is a structural problem.

We should be bringing as many services back in-house as we can, and funding the development of public services with public money in the public sector. Public-private partnerships are simply a device to siphon taxpayers money into the pockets of shareholders.